Rangel keeps gavel as panel probes

The House ethics committee formally voted on Tuesday to continue its probe into the personal finances of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Separately, the House defeated a GOP resolution to remove Rangel from his post. The vote was 242-157, with 16 members – including those on the ethics committee – voting “present.”

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The ethics committee vote on continuing the Rangel investigation was only a technicality, as a four-member investigative subcommittee led by Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) had already been reappointed.

Rangel is being scrutinized over a slew of alleged violations of House ethics rules, including control of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, failure to pay taxes on a Dominican resort home and his fundraising on behalf of the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College in New York.

The New York Times reported that Rangel helped preserved a lucrative tax loophole of an oil-drilling company CEO who pledged a $5 million donation to the Rangel Center. The New York Democrat has vehemently denied the allegation, but the ethics committee decided to look into the matter as part of its overall Rangel probe.

House Republicans are continuing to try to make Rangel - and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) - a larger political problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) offered Tuesday’s House resolution calling on Rangel to step down from his Ways and Means post while the ethics probe continues. Rangel has refused to do so, despite repeated calls from the GOP for his ouster, and Democrats have banded together over the last six months to defeat similar Republican motions.

Carter and several other Republicans later went to the House floor to castigate Rangel and Pelosi for another hour, after the House had completed its legislative business for the day.

Murtha presents another set of problems for Democrats. ABC News reported on Monday night that a Pennsylvania lobbying firm run by a former Murtha aide, the PMA Group, was raided by federal agents in November. This comes after disclosure of another raid by criminal investigators into Pennsylvania businesses linked to the veteran lawmaker.

Murtha's office claims the raids, which involve the FBI and other federal agencies, have nothing to do with the lawmaker, but Murtha has steered hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks to the firms being searched. In return, the companies, their lobbying clients and employees have steered tens of thousands of dollars to Murtha's re-election campaign and leadership PAC.

So far, there has been no GOP effort to oust Murtha from his position as chairman of the Defense subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee, but Republican insiders said that is an idea under consideration.